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The Red Room in The Haunting of Hill House invites the occupants to create whatever space they want or need it to be. Take a look:

It’s a comfortable space where imagination and creativity have the freedom to flow free. For me, the red room would lure me in with a big papasan chair filled with pillows. Candles spread all around the room. There’s a bookshelf filled with notebooks to write and doodle in. One wall is covered in my favorite books and there’s a coffee table with a fresh pot of tea always ready along with an endless pile of petit fours.

What does your Red Room look like?

Between Hulu and Netflix alone, I’m positively overwhelmed with the selection of spooky, silly, campy movies and shows. I’ve narrowed it down 10 of my favorite picks every year. A couple of these come from my personal collection – not streaming yet.

I’m not a generally a complainer, but over the last couple of months I’ve had such a horrible experience with MoviePass I feel morally obligated to warn my fellow humans.

I signed up for the service in early February. And I honestly loved it. MoviePass gave me the freedom to see even the shitty movies guilt-free. Making fun of crappy movies at the theater with my friends was actually one of my favorite things to do for the first half of 2018. When I reserved a movie too early one day and had an issue getting my ticket at the theater, MoviePass customer service responded immediately through their in-app chat system and sorted out my problem in time for me to catch the film.

I enjoyed my experience so much that I gifted Ryan a MoviePass for Valentine’s Day so we could have an easy date night whenever. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, MoviePass doesn’t have an easy way to gift a membership, so I just signed up for a second account with a different email address, my same payment method and surprised Ryan.

In April, I needed to cancel the account I made for him. He had never activated the card, downloaded the app or used the service. I thought this would be easy. I contacted customer service through my app, sure they would be as fast and helpful as they were when I had a ticket problem.

I was wrong.

My question went unanswered for DAYS. I checked in on my app every couple hours for two days and then had more important things to do. I had notifications turned on, so I just waited for the notification. Or an email. Or ANY form of communication. After 5 days, I checked on the app again. I never got a push notification alerting me to a response, but MoviePass had finally responded… and 5 hours later, closed my case because I hadn’t seen it and responded so they “assumed everything was good.”

I should note that their response before closing my case directed me to their website to cancel the account. There is nowhere on their website to access your account, so the website directs you back to the app where they don’t answer either.

After repeating this cycle – messaging them, opening a new case, getting the same response, no notification, case closed before I could provide more information – THREE TIMES, I finally got a new answer on the 4th attempt. They told me I needed the card in my possession and they needed the number to close the account. It took me 2 months and a lot of pain and suffering to finally get the unused card from him. At which point, I contacted customer support yet AGAIN with the card number. This time, they told me that it didn’t matter if I had the card. Because the account was under his name, HE would need to contact them to close the account.

OH! And they also made sure to respond after midnight and close the case before 7am for non-response. It’s not like I need to sleep.

It’s the end of June at this point so let’s recap: I have been paying for this subscription for three months while getting the run around about canceling the account. The account is linked to MY email address, MY bank account and I have the card IN MY POSSESSION. But now they need HIM to contact them to cancel? Bullshit. I am the owner of his account and my account. It’s clear at this point that MoviePass is going to do everything in their power to prevent me from closing the account.

So fuck them. Now I want MY account canceled.

They never responded to this request. They also stopped responding to my Twitter DMs for help. Thankfully, I was able to cancel my account and delete the app. THEN re-download the app, log into the gift account with my OTHER email and finally cancel that one too. I filed a complaint with the BBB (where their reviews are shockingly negative) and wanted to tell my story here as well so no one else gets dragged and charged for months.

I understand that MoviePass is struggling – especially with the recent launch of AMC’s A-list service – but is milking me for $10 a month so worth it to them that they’re willing to damage their reputation and customer perception? Clearly, MoviePass is just another greedy company willing to dick over the users they depend on just to make a buck.

Honestly, AMC’s program sounds MUCH better. And I’m sure Regal will introduce their own suite of options as well.

Thanks to Universal, I was invited to an advanced screening of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom yesterday. I’ve been excited about this release since the last movie rolled credits. At that time, I left the theater pumped up, riding high on thrills and nostalgia. After Fallen Kingdom, however, I left disappointed and confused.

Overall, it seemed like a bunch of recycled scenes taped together with disconnected stories and new characters too far down the timeline to care about. And the characters I know and love, fell flat. Ian Malcolm’s scenes seemed to be added as an afterthought just to include him in the film. Benjamin Lockwood is introduced as having an equal hand in the original park since day one as John Hammond’s partner. I racked my brain going over the last 4 movies for any mention of a Lockwood. There was none. So the plotline this movie hinges on feels forced and confusing.

As for the horror element, there were a couple of cool stylized shots. The dinosaurs are much more aggressive and threatening. Even some of the herbivores remind us they can be just as deadly. But the big, creepy mansion where most of the action takes place is a done to death horror staple that makes the trailers super misleading and the story further weird-feeling. I’d love to do a film over film comparison of deaths by dino. I’d bet that Fallen Kingdom was on the lower end of the carnage scale, but there were a lot more scenes full of suspenseful near-death moments that I really enjoyed.

The dinosaurs really lead this one. Owen’s backstory with Blue is really sweet and emotional. It was refreshing to see so many humanizing and relatable moments between them, a reminder that both of them are deeper than their appearances. One of the best scenes, which is somehow both funny and brutal, stars a new dinosaur to the series who will become an instant fan favorite – Stygimoloch.

Dr. Wu’s new prototype is the most horrifying creature yet. Made by combining velociraptor genes with DNA from the previous film’s main attraction – Indominus Rex – the Indoraptor was expertly crafted for killing.

She gets a good amount of screen time to show off her speed, ferocity and terrifying intelligence. Her black and gold snake-like skin differentiate her from the classic predators as well as the new creations, making her stand out as nothing we’ve ever seen before. Fierce, beyond dangerous and utterly unstoppable.

I think we could have gotten a stronger story with existing characters instead of introducing so many new ones though. Dr. Henry Wu’s story for example – a genius geneticist who brought back an extinct ecosystem, exploited by various employers for their profit, caught in murky moral and ethical dilemmas. Is he a redeemable character? Could he be the ultimate villain?

Of course, I plan to see it several more times so we’ll see how my thoughts evolve after a couple screenings.

Do you plan to see the new Jurassic World?

There were two big thrills for me during the Super Bowl:
1) Seeing my boyfriend cry when his Eagles won the Lombardi for the first time in their history.
2) The latest trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

I can really see the horror influence here. Director J.A. Bayona is bringing a much darker feel to the films. And. I. Love. It. As a kid, seeing the first movie in the theater about 15 times, I got scared at the dilophosaurus/Jeep scene every time. I used to sleep on the top bunk and my headboard was against the wall, so there was this deep dark space behind my bed. It freaked me out so much, I had to fill it with stuffed animals because I was pretty sure a dilophosaurus was going to pop out of that space and rip me apart. While the other films certainly had moments of incredible tension, I’m hoping to find that fear again in Fallen Kingdom.

Look at that indoraptor arm curling through the window! Straight horror move right there. But I have so many questions now:
How does the indoraptor get into the girl’s bedroom?
Why is the rescue team moving the dinosaurs into a civilized area?
Why are they saving the most savage ones?
Why are they saving ANY other than Blue??
In the tunnel scene, that’s a baryonyx – are there going to be TWO major new dino villains?

Horror teeth. 100%

Speaking of, I’m stoked for new dinosaurs. That carnotaurus (RIP) is my soul dino and I’m hoping she survives that Rex attack. Baryonyx, Styrosaur maybe?? From the context of the plot, I think we’ll see more dino on dino fighting in the fray.

And old friends appear too. Can we talk about that T-Rex in the trailer scene! I already can’t breathe. In the new footage, Owen rolls out of a trailer holding a no-longer-sedated Rex, narrowly escaping the jaws of death. Look at the detail in the Rex’s face. There’s EMOTION in that (not even real) eye! In one still, you can see this momentary connection between human and dinosaur, you can practically hear the chain links of the food chain clink here as the Rex registers his nourishing surroundings. I can’t wait to see this full scene in context.